Cake Pops Halloween Style

Charlie's last soccer game for the season is tomorrow so to celebrate the Black Bats last game I attempted to make them some black bats for their after game snack.I made the wings too big because by the time I went to wrap them up each of them had at least 1 broken wing. Hopefully the 5 year old boys won't be too hard on me.

Since a batch of cake pops make like 36 or so I made the rest Halloween style. First up: mummies!
Second up: pumpkins!
Well that was a silly way to spend 3 hours. Therapeutic in a way, but unarguably silly. 5 year old boys would be just as happy with store bought cupcakes. Oh well.

Sushi Maru

We have a new sushi train restaurant (the food moves around the restaurant on a conveyer belt and you take what you want) in Spokane and since yesterday was kind of big for me the family decided I got to pick where we ate.

It was actually a great choice for the kids too though. They loved playing with the chopsticks and when Matt and I decided what we wanted off the train we let them taking turns grabbing the plates. Also, they had popcorn chicken and cream puffs so the kids didn't have to eat the eel and octopus Matt and I were chowing down on.

Charlie practicing with the chopsticks.He got even better at it when they brought out the little plastic attachments for the tops to keep them together.

Annie just basically drummed with hers.

Fun place, we'll definitely be back.

free sling

Click here for a free baby sling from Seven Everyday Slings. You just have to pay shipping (which is pricey - like $11). Enter promo code: "Washington". Not totally free because of shipping but it's still a nice cheap gift to have on hand. You're welcome.

My Homeless Bug.

Poor child. His parents can't afford pajamas that match. And they make him dress like a bug or a bee or something with antennae and wings and pose for them. I really hope they're not screwing him up.On a happier and slightly less weird note Charlie's birthday party is tomorrow. We're having it at this fun pizza place that has this huge climbing structure that we're calling a fortress. We've written up 'missions' for the kids to complete and have their rewards (camo bandannas, wax mustaches, Snickers bars) all ready for them. Hopefully it's fun and not too weird that his parents are in all camo and are yelling things like 'let's move folks!' at the little kids.

For his cake this year we ordered a Costco cake and asked them to frost it in white but not decorate it. We decorated it with his army men, a few tanks, a tent, and some trees. Kind of a lazy man's cake but it's what he asked for and what GI Charlie asks for he gets!

Cake Pops - the real way

Last night I made cake pops for my office the hard way. I actually made a cake, crumbled it up in a bowl, added the frosting to make a 'dough' and formed them into balls. It actually wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be.

The first time around I used donut holes, thinking I was making the process easier on myself, but it really wasn't too much harder to do it the right way.

For the record: they say "DZA hearts webinars". I told people they had to come to the conference room and listen to a webinar about cost reporting forms in order to have a treat. It was cruel, but it made me happy to mess with my co-workers like that so I felt like I won. Me and Charlie Sheen are #winning.

Check out what I wasted my night making:

Cake Pops!

Turns out they're a ton of work. I even cheated by not making the cake (crumbling it, forming it into balls, chilling it, etc), I used store bought doughnut holes instead. I thought I was being so smart but it was still super labor intensive and frustrating to make them look good. I should really photograph the reject pile, then maybe you'd feel my pain.

As the husband pointed out though it was self inflicted pain. I could have spent $5 and gone out and bought store bought cupcakes for Annie's class tomorrow. Instead I wanted to spend about $8 and 1 1/2 hours and make something much smaller and not any cooler.

I love learning lessons.

Um yum.

A few weeks ago my office took a trip to Laser Quest and I happen to zero in on a sign on the wall that said take your scorecard to Maggie Moos for a free ice cream. Yes please. I will take 2 scorecards thanks.Annie looks like she's in some kind of strawberry ice cream with M&M coma. I think that means she liked her concoction. Charlie choose bubble gum ice cream with marshmallows. He ate about 1/2 of it and then tried mine and decided he didn't like his anymore. I probably could have told him that before he ordered it but trying to talk a 4 year old out of bubble gum ice cream didn't seem like a fight I wanted to have at the time. Better to let him make the mistake on his own terms.

My dark chocolate with Reese was awesome for the record (which this is).

Free box transformed.

About a month ago my mother-in-law came home from the thrift store with this funny little box. By funny I mean ugly. Sorry Cheryl.

She was so happy to give it to me and tell me how easy it would be for me to fix up. I saw dollar signs and massive amounts of time and hassle and so it sat. For a while the kids gave each other rides around the house in it since it has wheels. However Matt put the kibosh on that when he noticed they were scuffing up the walls.

And so it sat in the laundry room for about 3 weeks taunting me.

Nice fabric is like $10 a yard and I was thinking I probably needed 2 to do this right. My free box was going to cost a lot more than free to be pretty enough to use. Finally it dawned on me that we have a stack of old sheets downstairs from the days before pink was banned from our bedroom (back from when there was just a me not an us). And so voila! With a little fabric glue and Matt's staple gun I was able to cover the nasty denim with some pretty-enough-for Annie's room pink!

I didn't stop there though. Oh no. While looking through our old sheets I found a piece of a quilt my mom made me for my daybed back when I was oh say eleven'ish. Serious quilters and crafters stop reading here. I sliced it up and staple gunned it to the top for a little flare.

The best part was I didn't even have to clean the Construx off my sewing machine table for this project. No sewing involved when you have a staple gun.

The lid turns over so you can use it as a table. So when Annie's reading the newspaper in her princess chair she'll have a place to set her coffee. Perfect!

So for once free really meant free!

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Well, to me, today, it was free.

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Cheryl bought the box, I should probably give her her $5 back now that I've fixed it up.

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My mom spent time and money on the quilt 18 years ago. She's not getting any money, she probably didn't even know that I had pieces of that quilt left.

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So it was sort of free I guess. Free enough.

Last day of swim.

Below is Charlie on his last day of swim lessons last week. Mostly happy. Below is the "before" being thrown off the diving board at the end of class.

And, of course, the "after". Not real happy.

Due to low enrollment I guess our little pool had to close early for the season so lessons are over for the year. Charlie did great though and once the new YMCA opens up on our side of town we're signing up for more.

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For your random enjoyment: Zucchini Jeannette "before".

Zucchini Jeannette "after".

This was a weird post ah? I went into the office last week and some of the gals had made a Zucchini Jeannette to sit at my desk and keep them company while I was gone. I had to bring her home and make her into cake, I couldn't resist.

Sneaky Meatball

She waited until we were all distracted with door prizes at the baby shower last night and then she made her move...

...genius little Meatball used both hands and ate as fast as she could, somehow knowing her time was limited. That's my girl!

What the donut?

I can't believe it's 4:00 and I'm just finding out about this!



Click here for Free Donuts!



That will teach me to spend a day away from my computer...never again I tell ya.

My rhubarb is growing rhubarb!

See that giant stalk in the middle? It actually has smaller rhubarb stalks growing out of it. It's so crazy. It's also growing cauliflower?

Grandpa Ken, what was in that horse manure you sent over a couple of weeks ago? It's making funny things happen to my plants. Thank you?

For the love of the dog.

http://kraft.promotions.com/ombeeffranks/front.do

Click on the above link for free franks. Hurry, it's a today only kind of deal.

OK, back to work.

Caking it up Charlie style.

We turned Annie's party on Sunday into a dual party so that the family didn't have to give up 2 afternoons so close together since Charlie's birthday is right around the corner.

So. Since I went to the effort to make such a girly girl cake for my girly girl I thought I needed something just as labor intensive that would fit my little boy's personality.

I settled on the concept of a light saber cake. Seemed fitting since not a day goes by that we don't fight light sabers.

I didn't really have much of a plan when I started other than I was going to make a sheet cake, lay out some Little Debbies and make some fluffy frosting that would cover up the seams and just see what happened.For the frosting I made whip cream and added a packet of vanilla instant pudding. This made the frosting nice and fluffy so I could jam it all around the cake and Swiss Rolls so it would look like one unit. To get the nice shade of 'light-saber-gray' I added some Hershey's syrup as well as some black food coloring.

My plan had a slight flaw: when I laid the Swiss Rolls out they were way too low compared to the cake. My light saber cake needed to be proportionate to the real one or no one would know what I was trying to make. Luckily I had a little cake left over so I cut it up and used it for a platform for the Little Debbies.

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Then I added some green food coloring to the left over whip cream frosting and frosted the base cake under the Swiss Rolls as well as all over the top of them.

For the buttons I used gumdrops. For the black lines I added a ton of black food coloring to the leftover gray frosting, got out my cake decorating tips, found one that just makes a line and attempted to replicate the lines on his toy, without going overboard like I tend to do.

I'm undecided on whether or not I'm proud of my work, I got mixed reactions at the party. A couple people didn't know what it was...and they were people who I know have seen Star Wars. Then other people said it was awesome. My husband said the doll cake was better (a back-handed compliment I guess?).

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So obviously my design could use some work, however Charlie loved it and it turns out his opinion is the only one that really mattered so I guess it was a success!

Now do this.

I may have to rename my blog to be something like 'Awesomedealfinder.com' or 'stuffforpoorpeeps.com'. I found another one that I couldn't resist sharing:

Denny's is offering free Grand Slams on Tuesday. If I only had the time...by time I mean patience. I'd last about 1 second in line with all the other hungry and cheap people in Spokane.

And I'm totally on record as being both always so I'm not making fun. I'm just saying I don't always like hanging out with my peers.

Oh and no printer required this time (Dave) so no excuses!

Do this.

One of my favorite sites, Restaurant.com, is offering 70% off their gift certificates that normally sell for $10 (but are worth $25). Which means you get a $25 gift certificate for $3!

Go to the site, enter your zip code, buy a gift certificate for a restaurant in your area. Do it now. The deal expires on the 31st.

The code to enter at checkout is SUPER. And might I add that this really is a super deal. Matt and I have tried so many restaurants that we normally wouldn't have or that we wouldn't have been able to afford had it not been for this site.

Just be sure you have a printer ready to go because you print them yourself.

Enjoy!

It doesn't get much sweeter than this.

Just wanted to take a second to rub my sweet life in the rest of my working friend's faces.

Working from home means I get to make breakfast whenever I want and eat it in front of the computer.

My friend Lori turned me on to these little breakfast sandwiches modeled after the Egg McMuffin. My version doesn't exactly look like the Egg McMuffin due to the ultra hearty whole wheat bread (read: nasty cardboard) but it tastes almost as great (oh wait: it doesn't but its all relative).

Oh and for the record I'm wearing slippers and a Boundary Bay Beer t-shirt and I haven't brushed my teeth yet because I plan to drink coffee until about 10. My life is so awesome right now.

Oyster Fest-O!

My pictures don't do them justice but we discovered the most magical oysters on the island. We usually buy them at the grocery store and they get them from a little oyster farm on the island. By the time you buy them though they're usually a couple of days old and they're a pretty standard size. Before this last weekend I really had no reason to complain about them though.

This time we discovered a little farmhouse on the way out to our cabin that sells these giant (we're talking the size of your hand, not fist, hand) oysters that you get to pick out yourself from a big saltwater tank.

Matt came out of the farmhouse with the biggest smile on his face. He had a bag of 12 gargantuan oysters and a pound of fresh clams. Yum!

Hooray for McDonalds!

Both kids and I (that's right, both!) met Matt for lunch at McDonalds after our play date today. While we were eating the nice employee who had rung us up, missing an unfortunate front tooth and being way too old to work at McDonalds, came over and commented on how cute our kid looked in his Seahawks shirt.

Next thing we knew he was coming back over with a free ice cream cone! Note to self: always dress Charlie in Seahawks gear when going to fast food restaurants.

On a somewhat related note: at our little play date today Charlie got to paint a picture using a potato as a stamp and glue peas to a piece of paper. I generally avoid crafts at our house because I fear the mess. Hopefully this mommy that had us over will keep inviting us over so Charlie can get his crafts in and I can continue to avoid unnecessary messes. Mother-of-the-Year, I know.